HERCULES: A Three Degree-of-Freedom Pneumatic Upper Limb Exoskeleton for Stroke Rehabilitation.

This paper outlines the construction, current state, and future goals of HERCULES, a three degree-of-freedom (DoF) pneumatically actuated exoskeleton for stroke rehabilitation. The exoskeleton arm is capable of joint-angle control at the elbow in flexion and extension, at the shoulder in flexion and extension, and at the shoulder in abduction and adduction. In the near future we plan to embed kinematic synergies into the control system architecture of this arm to gain dexterous and near-natural movements.Clinical Relevance- This device can be used as an upper limb rehabilitation testbed for individuals with complete or partial upper limb paralysis. In the future, this system can be used to train individuals on synergy-based rehabilitation protocols.